Cherry Blossom
Transcript: My firsts college writing required me to comment upon a specific experience in the past when I successfully used rhetoric to shape my self-image. At the time of reading the prompt, I didn’t have a clear understanding of what rhetoric was. However, after learning different rhetorical concepts such as logos, kairos, ethos and pathos, I was able to recall the experience when I used them without knowing what they are. My first inquiry introduced me to the concept of analysis of myself as well as other people using rhetoric. I included this work in my portfolio not only because it is one of my favorite papers but because I can trace my development as a writer from the very beginning. The first Inquiry solely taught me important concepts that I referred back to throughout the year. These 3 pages of Inquiry 1 was a pain for me since I wasn’t used to write that much. Over the course of the year, I developed my ability to write more than 3 pages and to spend not all day thinking about the topic of inquiry and then two days thinking about how to implement the topic into the essay. Comparing to this essay, I now became more productive. However, because of the amount of work I had to do lately, I admit that the quality of my writings might have gone down. This essay has been nominated by my English 111 teacher to be published in the next year university composition book. The second work that I included in my portfolio comes from my English 111 class. I had to analyze the topic that concerns me in my hometown or home country, as in my case. I wrote an analytical paper on the issue of EXPO-2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan. The next step was to recreate my analysis into a different type of media. I decided to use a poster. My poster is a good example of my development not only as a regular text writer, but also as a multimodal user. Through the poster, I am showing how I gained new skills as well as discovered new resources to use for those new skills. I explored different technical advances that new technologies provide, such as templates for posters. Without this inquiry, I would not know that my computer has many other options other than just going online. For this poster, I had to learn how to cut off the information that is not important and how to emphasize the attention on certain sentences or paragraphs. I learned how to separate the most important points from the rest of the essay's body and how efficiently bring these points to the audience by using media. Now, I have trained skills that enable me to focus on the central information in my essays and other writings. Poster Cherry Writer's Blossom The Development As branches on a tree become more developed and gain flowers, over a year of growth, I expanded my knowledge and gained new skills. -Alena First Experience writing One of the examples of how my writing has improved throughout the year can be seen by looking at the English 112 Inquiry 2 paper. I analyzed a famous comic called Maus. The analysis included the discussion of drawing techniques and comic's historical background. The analysis I performed for this inquiry is different from what I did in my English 111 class when I analyzed an issue in my hometown. I used both analysis in my portfolio to trace the progress, even though they might be hard to compare because they are performed in different media. My analysis of Maus is a combination of analysis of the topic that is being discussed and the way it has been carried to the audience. I talk about how the author supports his idea using drawing techniques. I am making an argument of how comic as a media is an effective way to convince the audience by providing and discussing examples taken from Maus. The highest increase in my writing abilities was noticed in my scientific papers. Indeed, my first sentence sounded like I just started to analyze results obtained from the lab in the discussion section. Before my first chemistry lab class, I had no idea how to write reports. Over the courses of biology and chemistry this semester, I learned step-by-step how to create scientific papers. I learned the order in which scientists put introduction, abstract, title, methods, reference, discussion and so on. Moreover, I didn’t only learn the order but I had to write my own lab reports that were the worst experience of the writing this year. You never know (well, I never knew before I learned by trials and errors) which tense to use in every section of a lab report. Every time I finished my lab report, I thought of myself as a lab report God, which lasted till I had to write the next lab and determine which tense I use in methods, introduction and discussion sections. I included my lab report in the portfolio because it reflects the hardest writing skill that I had to learn from the very bottom. My development as a lab report writer is unquestionable and supports my argument of overall growth. I basically cannot comment on how my scientific writing changed because I don’t
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